‘We assist them address their distorted thoughts’: reintegration actors and the politics of post-expulsion in Kosovo

Abstract

The mainstreaming of the Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration (AVRR) policy at the global and regional level has led to increased academic attention to the actors implementing it. However, critical research has focused on ‘assisted voluntary return’ practices in host countries during pre-expulsion, giving insufficient attention to post-expulsion dynamics in the countries of citizenship. Addressing this gap, the article examines the work of reintegration actors in Kosovo, where various state and non-state actors provide reintegration services. Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of interviews with reintegration actors and drawing on the ‘analytics of government’ framework, the article conceptualises reintegration as a technology of governance that aims to influence the conduct of expelled irregular migrants in the post-expulsion phase. The article finds that reintegration actors understand irregular migration as a product of structural and individual factors, but at the level of interventions, they problematise the perceived individual psychological predispositions towards irregular migration. The analysis further shows how these actors employ psychosocial techniques to promote neoliberal subjectivities that are assumed to deter irregular re-migration while producing ‘proper’ mobile subjects. By centring the practices of reintegration actors, the article extends the spatial and temporal scope of critical scholarship towards the politics underpinning post-expulsion interventions.